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Users of Google (GOOG) in China have found themselves unable to access its main site, or its China-based site and services. The apparent reason: the Chinese government is angry with the company for spreading pornography.

"We have found that the English version of Google.com has spread lots of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations," Qin Gang, China's foreign ministry spokesman, said at a news briefing, the Associated Press reported. Google, he said, was told to remove the porn "immediately."
The lack of connectivity to Google among Chinese users began Wednesday evening, AP reported. Qin did not answer questions regarding China's involvement in the outage but did say he hopes the problem can be "resolved immediately."

Google will have to cooperate or do its best to appease the Chinese government's demands. Under even the best of circumstances, business and politics do not blend well together. In this situation, China is not helping its cause among its citizens by creating such a stir; it's simply drawing more attention to the porn it is attempting to block.

With hundreds of millions of Chinese online, China is fighting the same kind of battle as the U.S. in its war on drugs, Douglas A. McIntyre wrote today on 24/7 Wall Street. Too many people want what Google has to offer, he wrote, which always pushes ingenuity to its limits.

But the outage may be short-lived: reports of spotty access to Google sites have surfaced, the Los Angeles Times reported. (Last week, Google said it would block porn on its google.cn site, the Times reported. Chinese sensors countered that porn could still be viewed on Google.com.